Now, we are cooking: The Kitchen from Studio Olafur Eliasson
Studio Olafur Eliason is a Berlin-based art studio that, among many other points of engagement, has a kitchen. This book shares how the kitchen nourishes the 100+ people at the studio and also how it naturally merges with the studio’s work, practice and civic engagement. Despite appearances, this is not (just) a pretty sit-on-the-coffee-table art book or pull-it-down-when-you-need-a -recipe cookbook. Open this book up and read it straight through. If you’ve got a long summer afternoon, do it in one day or, if not, try reading it with your morning porridge, like I did. Since this book defies description, I will not try. I will only say that this delicious offering, reminded me why food inspires and intrigues me daily. The descriptions of the Studio’s Life in Space and other workshops and public events are thought-provoking and invite us to consider ideas like eating color and eating light. Other descriptions, like eating all local one day and then all imported food the next, may shake your sensibilities. The recipes from the studio’s kitchen are great reads. Some of them, like natto miso, you will probably never make (and the honest admission that it “may take some time to get used to” probably doesn’t help…). But there are plenty of everyday recipes, like brown rice balls, radicchio salad, and a simple tomato secco formula that you will want to flag. But, it’s the philosophical sparks woven in with classic food thinkers like Rudolf Steiner, Alice Waters and MIchio Kushi that make this offering so special.
“The Kitchen celebrates the connections between human beings, food, and the sun as a system of energy exchange, as an ecology of giving and taking, of sharing.”
Learn a little more about Olafur Eliason studio’s work.